From presents to payments to pressure
By AMY NEFF ROTH
The Observer-Dispatch
Nov 30, 2009
The holidays can be hard on the pocketbook. And that holiday spending can be hard on your mental health.
Whether celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa or Ramadan, “celebrating during the holiday season, for most Americans, includes spending money, whether for gifts and cards, entertaining or making charitable donations,” said Rosemarie Hall, a licensed clinical social worker in Barneveld. “Overspending has played no small part in fueling holiday-related depression, with people who already suffer from an underlying depression being at increased risk.
“It’s no fun to wake up in January with credit card bills that can’t be paid,” she said.
Even without overspending, the holidays can be a tough time of year. Many people in this area of long, dark days suffer from seasonal affective disorder, said Utica-based licensed clinical social worker Maria Horan. And the holidays are often difficult for anyone who has lost a loved one in the past year, she added. Money problems can just add to the depression, she said.
Get outside yourself
New Hartford psychologist Andrew Kinney said he believes the holidays also bring an increase in self-focusing and self-awareness, a state of mind in which people see the differences between who they are and who they want to be. This can lead to anxiety and depression.
Throw in money troubles and the discrepancy between what people can afford and what they want to spend, and the situation gets worse, he said.
Kinney suggested that people stop thinking so much and start living.
Volunteering or doing other things that focus on others can be helpful, he said. And people just have to accept the reality of their financial situation and realize that thinking about it won’t change anything, Kinney said.
Pressure to spend
But the pressure to overspend can be hard to overcome. A person’s holiday spending habits tend to get set during childhood and a parent may feel guilty or inadequate if she can’t give her kids everything she had as a child, Horan said.
Horan said she also sees a lot of overspending out of guilt as people try to make up for something. This happens most often, she said, with divorced parents, who may rack up debt buying their kids presents that are “way out of their league.”
There’s also pressure to give gifts in line with what others are giving you, whether that’s financially reasonable or not, Hall said.
Certain mental health conditions can also exacerbate overspending, Hall said. Credit-card debt can be a symptom of bipolar disorder; some people with depression use “retail therapy” to alleviate their symptoms temporarily, she said.
Bottom line
But the bottom line, for the sake of your health – mental and financial – is that you have to set and stick to a budget, mental-health professionals agree.
“Good mental health generally dictates that one’s decisions be driven by plans (that) have been carefully thought through, perhaps in consultation with others,” Hall said.
By AMY NEFF ROTH
The Observer-Dispatch
Nov 30, 2009
The holidays can be hard on the pocketbook. And that holiday spending can be hard on your mental health.
Whether celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa or Ramadan, “celebrating during the holiday season, for most Americans, includes spending money, whether for gifts and cards, entertaining or making charitable donations,” said Rosemarie Hall, a licensed clinical social worker in Barneveld. “Overspending has played no small part in fueling holiday-related depression, with people who already suffer from an underlying depression being at increased risk.
“It’s no fun to wake up in January with credit card bills that can’t be paid,” she said.
Even without overspending, the holidays can be a tough time of year. Many people in this area of long, dark days suffer from seasonal affective disorder, said Utica-based licensed clinical social worker Maria Horan. And the holidays are often difficult for anyone who has lost a loved one in the past year, she added. Money problems can just add to the depression, she said.
Get outside yourself
New Hartford psychologist Andrew Kinney said he believes the holidays also bring an increase in self-focusing and self-awareness, a state of mind in which people see the differences between who they are and who they want to be. This can lead to anxiety and depression.
Throw in money troubles and the discrepancy between what people can afford and what they want to spend, and the situation gets worse, he said.
Kinney suggested that people stop thinking so much and start living.
Volunteering or doing other things that focus on others can be helpful, he said. And people just have to accept the reality of their financial situation and realize that thinking about it won’t change anything, Kinney said.
Pressure to spend
But the pressure to overspend can be hard to overcome. A person’s holiday spending habits tend to get set during childhood and a parent may feel guilty or inadequate if she can’t give her kids everything she had as a child, Horan said.
Horan said she also sees a lot of overspending out of guilt as people try to make up for something. This happens most often, she said, with divorced parents, who may rack up debt buying their kids presents that are “way out of their league.”
There’s also pressure to give gifts in line with what others are giving you, whether that’s financially reasonable or not, Hall said.
Certain mental health conditions can also exacerbate overspending, Hall said. Credit-card debt can be a symptom of bipolar disorder; some people with depression use “retail therapy” to alleviate their symptoms temporarily, she said.
Bottom line
But the bottom line, for the sake of your health – mental and financial – is that you have to set and stick to a budget, mental-health professionals agree.
“Good mental health generally dictates that one’s decisions be driven by plans (that) have been carefully thought through, perhaps in consultation with others,” Hall said.
